Wednesday, 22 January 2014

"Are we being de-gifted Miss?"

By Terry
Wrigley. Based on an article by Valsa
Koshoy and Catrin Pinheiro-Torres (Brunel University) in British Educational
Research Journal, Dec 2013

Recent
research has highlighted the confusion in government policies for children
labelled Gifted and Talented. The policy was introduced in injudicious haste
and with unclear reasoning, initially as part of Excellence in Cities (1999)
then spread across the country, subjected to annual changes of definition,
diminishing funds and finally an expectation that schools should pursue it
independently without guidance or support.

It
was one of many soundbite policies. The motive may have been an attempt toretain middle class children in state
comprehensives. It was also supposedly intended to ensure that bright children
from poorer families were noticed and helped to flourish.

There
is immense confusion about what ‘gifted and talented’ means. The assumption at
the DfE appears to have been that ability is fixed and innate, but this is widely
contested. For example Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton argue that we should enable
everyone, without exception, to develop all their talents to the full. They
oppose the notion that a fixed percentage of the population are members of a
distinct group of gifted and talented individuals. The US has a long history of
identifying ‘gifted children’ through IQ tests, which neglects the diversity of
practical or creative talents.

Being
labelled ‘gifted’ or ‘talented’ can even be damaging. It might be negatively
viewed by peers, or you might think skill comes without effort. As Carol Dweck
has shown, believing that your abilities are fixed leads people to beafraid of making mistakes and avoid taking
risks, in case this exposes them as not so gifted after all. The terminology of
‘giftedness’ suggested, for many teachers, a very rare person, a Mozart or
Einstein.

Using
questionnaires and interviews, the researchers have exposed a mess of
understanding and muddled practice. Many schools label children as gifted and
talented at the age of 5 or even 2 or 3 years old. In most cases, the children are
provided with more out-of-school activities but little was done inside the
classroom. An Ofsted evaluation in 2003 showed that they were typically given
additional rather than more challenging work.

Despite
the fact that a register was supposed to help notice gifted and talented
children from disadvantaged backgrounds, few schools do any socio-economic or
ethnic monitoring to ensure this is happening. Since there is no way of
identifying latent ability,this inevitably favours children whose
parents have already given them plenty of opportunities. To those who have,
more shall be given.

Children
from poorer backgrounds are systematically deprived of opportunities to
develop. Their parents can’t afford to buy them attractive books, to pay for
music lessons, to travel. The children hang around bored through the long
summer holidays, unable to afford activity schemes or sports schools. The
parents are less likely to have had an education which helps them recognise the
educational benefit of science or nature programmes on TV or visits to museums.
The only socially just ‘gifts and talents’ policy would be to provide rich and
diverse experiences from an early age.

Children
who are particularly advanced at maths or music or drama should be given every
opportunity to develop their creativity, including expert coaching and the
chance to collaborate sometimes with children with similar abilities and
enthusiasms - difficult to manage in a standardised content-laden and test-driven
curriculum. But other children who have never
had the chance also need the opportunity to discover new interests and possible
talents. A much better model would be children’s centres for out-of-hours
learning and holiday schemes, or the Venezuelan-style youth orchestras and
music schools which are open to all.

1 comment:

Interesting article and quite accurate regarding how schools see and manage those they label, but they do like to label don't they! It keeps things neat and tidy if you give them a label and it is so easy to put them back into their right place if they have a label.

Realising potential, making up for a background described as "disadvantaged" (there we go with labels again) is something that comes from within and in some cases what some may call "luck" but best described as taking chances. Often it involves a key realtionship with somebody playing the part of a mentor. It also comes from not accepting any labels you may have been given.

My work (32+ years of teaching), research, and my own experience, has suggested that there is something else at work when it comes to shrugging off any labels and realising your potential.

First it is a state of mind and secondly it is being able to mange your environment to meet your needs. In the 'education years' this is primarily your learning environment. I describe this ability to manage your learning environment to meet your learning needs as "Learning Intelligence" or "LQ" for short. LQ is a construct formed by attributes, skills and behaviours.

I have applied the concept of LQ to coaching students as well as in my own life and it works. I believe it is the most significant development in education for some time and the work and findings of people like Hattie and Dweck confirm the principles behind LQ.

I have written at length about LQ and you can find the first of 20+ articles on LQ here: http://wp.me/p2LphS-3p